Re: Biblical Interpretation Reconsidered

Jack Haas wrote:

> Greetings to the group.
>
> I offer the following quote as all too typical of the way a large
> segment of the church regards scripture and nature:
> _______________________________
>
> "...trust the Bible, as Jesus did (‘it is written’; ‘Scripture cannot
> be broken’ John 10:35). And Jesus never separated biblical morality
> from biblical history. Indeed, Jesus told Nicodemus (John 3:12): ‘I
> have spoken to you of earthly things and you do not believe; how then
> will you believe if I speak of heavenly things?’ If Jesus was wrong
> about earthly things (like a recent creation and a global Flood—Luke
> 17:26–27), why should we believe what He says about heavenly things?
> And in the passage above, Jesus taught about the moral issue of
> marriage by connecting it with the fact of the creation of man and
> woman as Genesis says! The Sabbath commandment, another moral issue,
> was given explicitly because God created the heavens and earth in six
> normal-length days and ‘rested’ on the seventh day (Exodus 20:8–11).
> If you compromise the Bible, then what is to stop you from
> compromising Christ? We all need to learn to not take our views to the
> Bible but let the Bible dictate what our views should be. God is never
> wrong, so we should trust Him. If we elevate our words to be equal to
> God’s then we are trying to equate ourselves with God. If we regard
> ‘nature’ as the ‘67th book of the Bible’, as Dr **** teaches this
> means that man’s fallible science, which tells us of ‘nature’, has
> been elevated to the status of Scripture. That’s the problem. Remember
> John 1:1-3."

Jack -
        I agree that the kind of biblical interpretation espoused here is quite
inadequate. But I agree with the comments at the end about the notion of nature as "the
67th book of the Bible" (& wish "Dr ****" had been identified). The idea that our
experience of the natural world is on the same level with historical revelation for
telling us about God & God's relationship with the world has to be rejected. Scientific
investigation of nature can help us to understand God's presence & activity in the world
but only when it is placed in the context of God's self-revelation in the history of
Israel which culminates in Christ. OTOH, that historical revelation is not simply to be
identified with the Bible, which should be seen rather as witness to revelation.

                                                        Shalom,
                                                        George

George L. Murphy
gmurphy@raex.com
http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/
Received on Thu Dec 18 14:51:06 2003